'Jack,' said Captain Knowlton, who had come to see me at Castlemore for a few hours, 'I have brought some news. Your aunt is going to be married.'
'Aunt Marion?' I cried.
'You haven't another aunt, have you?' he asked.
'No, of course not,' I answered; 'but I thought she was too old.'
'Anyhow,' he said, 'she is going to marry Major Ruston, and in about a month I shall come to fetch you to the wedding.'
'But,' I asked, 'what shall I do in the holidays?'
'We must manage as best we can,' he answered. 'You understand that I have taken you entirely off her hands. In the future you must look to me. Will you object to that?'
'I shall like it immensely,' I said; and the following morning Mrs. Windlesham helped me to compose a suitable letter of congratulation to Aunt Marion.
In due course Captain Knowlton came, according to his promise, to take me to the wedding, and we were driven direct from the London terminus to his own rooms in the Albany, where I made the acquaintance of Rogers, his servant, a pleasant-looking man, about twenty-seven years of age, who seemed always to wear a blue serge suit. Rogers took me to the Hippodrome that evening, and the next afternoon to a house at South Kensington, where I found Aunt Marion looking younger and more smartly dressed than I had ever seen her before.
'Did Captain Knowlton tell you the news?' she asked, when I had sat by her side for a few moments.